#local2610

Slogan on a retirees' coffee mug at the Local 2610 monthly meeting for retirees.

trouble paying medical bills. High healthcare costs not only hurt people’s health, but can also push whole families into financial hardship, debt, and even bankruptcy. A quarter of all people in Maryland under 65 years of age spend more than 7% of their income on medical costs.41     The Maryland survey findings are reflected in national figures: 41% of adults said in a 2012 national survey that they have problems paying medical bills or are paying medical bills over time, and 26% said they are in medical debt.42 Twenty-two percent of adults—more than one in five—said they had been contacted by a collections agency about medical bills, and two-thirds of these people reported that they suffered other financial consequences as a result of medical debt, such as a lower credit rating, loss of their savings, credit card debt, or bankruptcy.     Medical costs are the number one cause of personal bankruptcy in the United States. A national study found that 62% of personal bankruptcies were caused by illness and medical costs, and that 78% of people who experienced medical bankruptcy had health insurance at the onset of their medical condition." Maybe in the future, he can help determine whether or not the retirees' loss of healthcare was a violation of their human rights and therefore whether structural violence was at play.

I went to my second retirees' meeting yesterday. I met a state archivist who is likely going to take all of the artifacts from the hall, if me and Bill Barry are willing to archive them. This was great news as the steelworkers, Bill, and myself were clueless as to where the physical artifacts could be stored. In this way, the union were reliant on an outside academic institution to preserve their own material history. Bill and I were only the mediators between the museums and the union. The sheer amount of artifacts present in the union hall clearly demonstrates that the union had at least some foresight to preserve its own history. The bureaucratic nature of the union may have also have prevented them from disposing certain records. But I am not sure how important the workers as a whole found history and education to be. This is something that I would like to ask in a future interview Bill Barry, being both a history teacher who taught labor studies to many steelworkers throughout his life. It is important to keep in mind that this preservation of history is probably lowest on the list for the community of union retirees', over the issues of healthcare, which many have lost since the mill shutdown. For me to come in as a researcher who has only been in this community for an extremely short time, this could lead me with the (assumed) incorrect impression that most of the steelworkers do not care about preserving their own history. With the economic and social upheaval that started when Bethlehem declared bankruptcy 14 years ago, it is no wonder why the issue of historical preservation would be set to the wayside, and why it continues to be. It is hard to preserve your own history when you are trying to preserve your health, your attachment to your community, and your very way of life.  During the archiving project, it will be important to keep this in mind and to be especially patient and empathetic with the retiree's community, as they were hardest hit by the bankruptcy of Bethlehem.